Evolution of magnetic and transport properties in the Cu-doped pyrochlore iridateEu2(Ir1−xCux)2O7

Abstract

We have investigated the effect of Cu substitution in Eu2(Ir1-xCux)2O7 with the help of magnetic and transport property measurements. XPS measurement reveals that each Cu2+ converts Ir4+ to double amount of Ir5+ ions. The metal-insulator transition temperature (T_MI) is obtained around 120 K. In the insulating phase, at lower temperature below 50 K, the temperature dependent resistivity follows a power law dependence and the magnitude of the exponent increases with Cu concentrations. The temperature dependent thermopower is observed to follow the electrical resistivity down to 50 K, except for a sudden drop in thermopower at temperature below 50 K. We find negligible Hall voltage in the metallic regime of the samples but a sudden Hall voltage is developed below 50 K. We observe bifurcation in zero field cooled and field cooled (ZFC-FC) magnetization below irreversibility temperature, exchange bias and negative magnetoresistance at 3 K and the magnitude of all these properties increases with Cu concentrations. In the insulating region (below 6 K) there exists a linear specific heat and its coefficient decreases with Cu doping which indicates the reduction of spinon contribution with Cu doping.